He has been in prison for 19 years. According to Jakarta, the Indonesian capital, Paris has officially requested the repatriation of Serge Atlaoui, a 60-year-old Frenchman sentenced to death in 2007 for drug trafficking that he has always contested, in a country where anti-drug legislation is one of the most severe in the world.
“The French embassy delivered a letter from the French Minister of Justice to the Indonesian Minister of Justice, dated November 4, containing a request for the transfer of the French prisoner named Serge Atlaoui,” Yusril Ihza Mahendra told AFP , Indonesian Minister in charge of Legal Affairs and Human Rights.
Serge Atlaoui, aged 60, was arrested in 2005 at a factory where drugs were discovered outside Jakarta, with authorities accusing him of being a “chemist”. Initially sentenced to life in prison, he saw the Supreme Court increase the sentence, sentencing him to the death penalty on appeal.
“Under the table” work in a factory
This artisan welder, father of four children – three grown-ups and a boy, now a teenager, born from his union with his wife Sabine – has always denied being a drug trafficker, affirming that he had only installing industrial machinery in what he believed to be an acrylic factory. Serge Areski Atlaoui was born in Metz in 1963, he is the eldest of ten brothers and sisters.
A welder, he worked for a long time for the Renault industrial vehicles factory in Annonay (Ardèche), then in factories in the North and Lorraine. In 2005, he set out on his own and moved with Sabine to the Netherlands, to earn a living in metal construction. In September of that same year, he agreed to go to Indonesia to do work “under the table” whose physical conditions were very demanding but paid 2,000 euros per week.
In Tangerang, a suburb of Jakarta, Serge Atlaoui is responsible for welding mixers, pumps and distillation machines in what he believes to be an acrylic factory but which is in reality a clandestine MDMA factory, the principle active ingredient of ecstasy. According to him, he went there twice: first for six weeks, then a second time, for two mornings. “The first time, the factory was empty,” Sabine said in 2015. The second time, “he saw that there had been transformations in the premises, (…) then he heard a conversation” which made him understand that he has set foot in a quagmire. He doesn't have time to leave, according to her.
The facts for which he was convicted
The clandestine laboratory was dismantled by Indonesian special forces on November 11, 2005, two months after the arrival of Serge Atlaoui on site. Around thirty people were arrested, including the Frenchman, a Dutchman and five Chinese. Messin claims to have had no knowledge of the use that was going to be made of the machines he was to install. The trial took place the following summer and a year after his arrest, the welder, who maintained his innocence, was sentenced at first instance to life imprisonment. A few months later, the Banten Court of Appeal confirmed this sentence. According to the Quai d'Orsay, during the first trial, Atlaoui did not have an interpreter.
In May 2007, following the cassation appeal launched by the prosecution, Serge Atlaoui was sentenced to death. The same fate is reserved for the Dutch national. Both were then incarcerated on the island of Nusakambangan, south of Java, a prison nicknamed Indonesia's “Alcatraz”. His fellow inmate dies in custody.
In January 2015, six people, including five foreigners, were shot for drug trafficking. The new president, Joko Widodo, rejects the request for presidential pardon on which Atlaoui's lawyers had placed great hope. He was transferred to Tangerang to be executed alongside eight other convicts. On April 29, eight people were executed. Two Australians (Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran), three Nigerians (Sylvester Nwolise, Okwudili Oyatanze, Raheem Salami), a Ghanaian (Martin Anderson), a Brazilian (Rodrigo Gularte) and an Indonesian (Zainal Abidin) were shot shortly after midnight.
Diplomatic mobilization
After several international mobilizations, two names were removed from the list: those of Serge Atlaoui and Mary Jane Veloso, a Filipina also convicted of drug trafficking. To the voice of Corinne Breuzé, French ambassador in Jakarta, who had announced “consequences” on bilateral relations with Indonesia if Serge Atlaoui was executed as planned, are added those of François Hollande, President of the Republic, of Manuel Valls, Prime Minister, and Laurent Fabius.
Calling for a “gesture of clemency”, the Minister of Foreign Affairs recalls that the Indonesians “who directed this drug affair were not sentenced to the same sentence”. And the Quai d'Orsay recalls “the extremely questionable conditions” of the first instance trial, during which Serge Atlaoui “did not have an interpreter”.
VideoSerge Atlaoui's wife: “The situation remains very worrying”
But officially, Serge Atlaoui obtained this reprieve thanks to a final administrative appeal filed on April 25 by his lawyer to contest the rejection of his presidential pardon. This will be rejected by the Jakarta Administrative Court.
Since then, Atlaoui has changed his place of detention several times; he is currently in a prison in Jakarta.
The death penalty still in force in the country
The last executions in Indonesia date back to 2016: an Indonesian and three Nigerians convicted of drug trafficking were shot by a firing squad. No French person has been executed by Indonesia since 1979. Two nationals almost were: Félix Dorfin, arrested on the tourist island of Lombok, was sentenced, beyond requisitions, to the death penalty in 2019, for drug trafficking that he has always denied. The sentence was later commuted to 19 years in prison, which he is currently serving. Michaël Blanc, who was sentenced to life in prison after being arrested on the island of Bali in 1999 for drug trafficking, returned to France free in 2018.
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